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Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

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Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#91

Post by gruez »

arcticbull wrote: post #10

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1]. For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. Canada, a country 1/10th…

>The process of bringing in H-1Bs is already so expensive, arduous and wasteful that companies aren't going to be bringing in huge quantities of "US replacement" labor. I certainly wouldn't if I were in charge of hiring.

You might not be, but there are certainly companies where H-1Bs are their bread and butter[1]. Taking Cognizant as an example:

* their wikipedia page says "The company has 281,200[2] employees globally, of which over 150,000 are in India", which means there are at most 131,200 US employees

* in the year 2017 they brought in 28,908 H-1B workers. This works out to 22% of the US workforce. If we include 2016 as well that works out to 38% of the US workforce.

* the figures above are conservative estimates. We probably overestimated their US workforce and underestimated their H-1B population (we've only looked at 2 years of visas, but H1-B visas are good for up to 6 years).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Top_H-1B_employers_b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognizant

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#93

Post by flowerlad »

Requiring competitive wages is a good move. They should also have allowed H1B holders to switch to a different employer without requiring a new visa. Along with that they should also have increased the number of H1B visas available.

Currently many strong developers are being hired into Amazon and Microsoft but being positioned in Vancouver BC (a Canadian city a couple of hours from Seattle) [1]. These developers take American jobs but pay taxes to Canada, and contribute to Canadian economy instead of American.

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/prope...

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#94

Post by notJim »

I feel like rather than pitting immigrants against native born workers, and trying to come up with the perfect arcane rule, we should have sectoral bargaining where the workers could negotiate pay standards directly with their employers. Then it wouldn't matter where someone is from, because they'd be covered by that contract, and the government could get out of the way of the labor market.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#95

Post by jedberg »

jopsen wrote: post #84
jedberg wrote: post #9

Credit where credit is due, this is a good move. The H1B program has been abused for a long time. It sounds like these changes should help make it too expensive for the fraudulent abuse to continue.

Will an executive order (which I assume this is) actually make any difference? Doesn't it take an act of congress to make any serious headway here? Personally, I was an H1B a 4.5 years before Trump convinced it was time to leave. I was in the bay area and handsomely overpaid. I have no personal experience of it being abused, but I'm obviously privileged, having worked at reputable tech companies and coming from reaso…

This is a rule in the Federal Register. So it's basically like law. It's essentially how the executive is interpreting the laws that congress has passed.

There is a rule that says a new President can automatically overturn all rules made in the last 90 days of the previous administration, but we're before that deadline, so this is pretty much a done deal.

If the next admin wanted to change this, they have to go through the long and arduous rule making process again.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#96

Post by nerdface »

sjg007 wrote: post #44

I mean they will pay H1bs higher but still doesn’t make a company pay a us citizen higher. Maybe it will open up space for lawsuits based equivalent responsibilities and help the equal pay for equal movement. Even excluding H1bs we know there are people doing the exact same work for vastly different

H1Bs usually require the employer to prove they couldn't find someone within the country.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#97

Post by perfectbeeing »

api wrote: post #27

Fair trade policy has consistently been the one thing on which I agree with the Trump presidency. It hasn't been enough to outweigh all the other absolutely horrible stuff, but it is one thing. I am concerned that Biden will return us to the old days of "free" trade that allows corporations to import totalitarianism via near-slave or even actual slave (see Uyghur prisoners and forced labor) wage arbitrage to crush do…

This undecided voter would appreciate the gesture of you sharing with me some examples of the “other absolutely horrible stuff”.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#98

Post by mikeyouse »

notJim wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #9

Credit where credit is due, this is a good move. The H1B program has been abused for a long time. It sounds like these changes should help make it too expensive for the fraudulent abuse to continue.

> The H1B program has been abused for a long time What's the abuse?

"Body shops" like Infosys and Tata Consulting that import thousands of H1Bs under borderline fraudulent applications, and then underpay these employees.

Just a random link, but the contours of the problem:

https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr...

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#99

Post by smhost »

arcticbull wrote: post #10

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1]. For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. Canada, a country 1/10th…

[flagged]

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#100

Post by IvyMike »

notJim wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #9

Credit where credit is due, this is a good move. The H1B program has been abused for a long time. It sounds like these changes should help make it too expensive for the fraudulent abuse to continue.

> The H1B program has been abused for a long time What's the abuse?

There's lots of articles if you google for "h1b visa abuse", but this will get you started: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/proof-that-h-1b-vi...
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